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The Senate immigration reform bill, S.744 or the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act to give it it’s full title, was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday by a vote of 13 to 5.

The bill, which contained a provision that would offer 10,500 annual “Schumer” visas to the Irish, now goes to the Senate floor and backers are hopeful that the full Senate will take it up after the Memorial Day congressional break, that being the first week in June.

Please consider volunteering on November 24, 2012 for a day of Action to those still in need of help after Hurricane Sandy, organized in conjunction with coordination and assistance with community organizations and staff from the New York Irish consulate.

All are welcome to join our mobilization in the community to help. Also PLEASE pass the information along (post on Facebook, Twitter etc.) to anyone you think would be interested in helping, as there are many in our community still in great need of assistance.

Buses will leave designated locations at 7am and are expected to return @ 2:30 pm.

Clearly the luck of the Irish isn’t up to the year that’s soon to be in it.

The Irish government is reportedly set to introduce a new license-plate system next year amid fears that a “13” registration number will diminish new car sales.

Irish license plates show the car’s year as well as its home county.

Cars registered between January and the end of June will have a “131” notation on the plate. Those from July 1 to the end of the year will have “132” on the plate.

The decision, according to an Irish Times report, is based partly on fears that superstition over a “13” plate would affect sales and partly in response to the motor industry’s plea to spread sales more evenly across the year.

Up to now, there has been a glut of sales every January to March/April and then a virtual trickle of purchases for the rest of the year. This puts huge financial pressure on dealerships as cash flow dries up, the report stated.

By having a July registration, it is hoped that the sales bulge will be spread out over the year and possibly give a mid-summer lift to buying.

A bi-annual system is used in Britain, the report noted.

A government spokesman confirmed that the Department of Finance was actively considering the proposed change as part of a consultation process with the motor industry.

But the spokesman declined to comment because this is an issue that may arise in December’s Budget. The Revenue Commissioners also declined to comment, the report concluded.

Trouble flared in Belfast last week following the annual Orange Order July 12 celebrations.

On Thursday, violence erupted in the outskirts of North Belfast following contentious marches past a nationalist area.

The first parade was by Orangemen returning from the annual Twelfth celebrations; the second was by a nationalist group opposed to the parade.

As trouble broke out, petrol bombs and bricks were thrown at police lines by both nationalists and loyalists leaving 20 PSNI officers injured. The PSNI fired six plastic bullets, used water cannon on the crowds, and made several arrests. Later, up to 10 shots were fired at the police in what a PSNI spokesman described as “attempted murder.”

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable, Will Kerr, said the community needed to call a halt to the violence.

“I am angry that we have these three days of annual madness where it seems that everybody thinks the peacekeepers are a legitimate target,” he said.

“We will be making a significant number of arrests, as we did last year, over the course of the next weeks and months to make sure that people

are placed before the courts and answer for their decisions.”

There was also anger from nationalists after a loyalist band was filmed walking around in circles outside a Catholic church in Belfast playing anti-Catholic tunes.

The footage was loaded on to You Tube and made the news in Ireland after the individual filming the scene was attacked by the bandsmen.

Sinn Féin’s Conor Maskey was in the area at the time and witnessed part of the incident.

“The Orange Order needs to explain to the St. Patrick’s congregation why a loyalist band taking part in their parade played sectarian tunes and behaved provocatively outside St Patrick’s church,” Maskey said.

“The person filming was then attacked by a member of the band. It is time for the Orange Order to show leadership, step into the 21st century

and got rid of the organization’s anti-Catholic sectarian ethos.

Until that happens, then clearly this bigoted side of the organization will continue to manifest itself in incidents like this.”

Not at the fair, but rather at the 2014 Ancient Order of Hibernians National Convention which will take place in the Missouri two years from now.

And two years after that, the biennial gathering will take place in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

These and other important decisions pertaining to the future of the largest Irish American organization were finalized last week by members, men and women, who had gathered in Verona in upstate New York for the 2012 convention.

The event witnessed the end of the two term, four year, leadership of AOH National President, Philadelphia’s Seamus Boyle, and the installation of his successor, Brendan Moore, a resident of Rockland County, NY.

Outgoing ladies national president, Margaret Hennessy, was succeeded by Maureen Shelton from Michigan, while Mary Hogan from Brooklyn became national vice president.

The convention was addressed by, among others, North Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, and Ireland’s Consul General in New York, Ambassador Noel Kilkenny, who spoke effusively of the order’s storied past, and its varied and vital mission for the years ahead.

The Irish government is set to launch a formal complaint with the Mauritian government after a newspaper in the Indian Ocean island

published graphic photographs of the body of an Irish citizen murdered there.

Michaela McAreavey, a 27-year-old teacher from County Tyrone, was killed in January 2011 while on honeymoon in Mauritius with her husband John. She was the daughter of one of Ireland’s best known sports figures, Mickey Harte, manager of the Tyrone Gaelic football team.

Two men who went on trial for her murder were found not guilty last week following a seven-week court battle.

Avinash Treebhoowoon, 32, and Sandip Moneea, 43, both worked at the hotel where Mrs. McAreavey was murdered in her room.

After a trial lasting seven weeks, it took a jury at the Supreme Court in Port Louis just two hours to acquit the pair of strangling Mrs. McAreavey to death and dumping her body in a hotel bathtub.

the acquittal prompted a furious reaction in Ireland but will celebrations on the island by family members and supporters of the accused.

The prosecution claimed That Michaela had found the defendants ransacking her suite and said they murdered her to prevent her from raising the alarm.

But the trial heard claims that one of the men had been beaten into a confession, while the other was on the phone to his sister at the time the murder took place. No DNA evidence was found linking either men to the victim.

The basic competence of the police investigation and the officers who carried it out was questioned by the defense team with the testimony of successive policemen seized upon by defense lawyers as evidence of a mismanaged, insensitive and unprofessional inquiry.

Following the verdict, the McAreavey and Harte families released a statement saying: “After waiting 18 months in search of justice for Michaela and following the endurance of seven harrowing weeks of this trial, there are no words, which can describe the sense of devastation and desolation now felt by both families.”

A further blow to the families came on Sunday when crime scene photographs, including Mrs. McAreavey’s body and close-ups of her injuries, were published in a Mauritian Sunday newspaper.

The photographs have provoked outrage in Ireland with a spokesman for the McAreavey and Harte families saying: “They are in shock as to how

far this has gone.”

Taoiseach Enda Kenny branded the publication of the photos “a gross affront to human dignity” and said the Irish government would be lodging a formal complaint with the Mauritian government and protesting to officials in Mauritius in “the strongest possible terms.”

The Mauritian police have launched an investigation into how the photographs were obtained by the paper.